Pronunciation question (from L. Urdang)

Laurence Urdang urdang at SBCGLOBAL.NET
Wed May 30 12:34:27 UTC 2007


>From many years' living in England, I can attest to the appearance of a glottal stop almost anywhere in a word, a phenomenon that started in Estuary English and has spread to the West End.  But my comments on didn't were restricted to American English.
  Laurence Urdang

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: Pronunciation question (from L. Urdang)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 5/29/07, James Harbeck wrote:
> I've heard "dId at nt" maybe once or twice, maybe. "dIdInt" in emphatic
> use seems normal enough to me. The most interesting version was a
> BE-styled emphatic from a character in an episode of _Law & Order_:
> "dI'Int" (apostrophe for glottal stop). Is this being heard much by
> those who listen in those circles? It's foreign to me.

Check the archives for a long thread on the topic in Nov. '04...

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0411c&L=ads-l#4

--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list